A new soil mapping and nutrient management software called Soil Benchmark aims to make record-keeping and compliance assessment simpler on farm.

The UK-based start-up offers soil, manure and nutrient management reports, helping to address the ever-growing mountain of paper work farmers face.

The independent platform is now being used across 10% of England’s farmland, say co-founders Tom Scorpe and Ben Butler.

See also: How Arable Insights farmer panel are unlocking soil improvements

“Soil Benchmark brings together intuitive design, trusted datasets, and simple map-based editing to create faster, smarter plans,” says Tom.

Users can get started in 30 seconds by simply creating an account with an email address and adding your farm SBI number to import field boundaries.

Automatically populated layers of environmental data can be can be merged with the users’ own knowledge and insights to finalise the farm plan.

Soil

The soil mapping service can generate all of the required information for an Rural Payments Agency inspection at a cost of £200 for every SBI number for full reporting a year.

Discounted rates are available for agronomists/farms looking to upgrade multiple SBIs.

Manure

The platform automatically generates clear spreading risk maps based on slope, soil type and depth, water features and designated zones.

It also calculates crop nitrogen max limits, whole-farm nitrogen limit, and individual field limits based on nitrate vulnerable zone rules.

Nutrients

Thanks to an AI-powered soil sample reading, soil test results can be quickly uploaded to the system.

Users can keep nutrient planning records in an easy-to-manage place, detailing cropping, drill dates, yield, and nutrient applications.

Full nutrient management plan ready for Sustainable Farming Incentive NUM1 funding or Red Tractor farm assurance can be effectively produced.

Crop management

The next platform to be shortly launched will be a crop recommendation platform which details operations such as spray recommendations and variable rate mapping.

“We are continuing to evolve the platform and branch out to become a comprehensive agronomy tool,” notes Tom, who also says the system could expand in to gross margin analysis and dataset benchmarking.